Installing page packages

You can install help and system page packages for any language you want to support for your wiki users. You should see links for each supported language, and below an install link for each page package of that language — click on it for each of the packages you wish to install. When you're finished, restart the wiki (otherwise it won't recognize the newly installed pages correctly).

Make sure you at least install the essential system page package for the language_default you might have configured (the default for this setting is en, i.e English). Note however that if you don't install the whole page set, the installed pages may contain broken links to the non-installed.

If you want to use translated categories and templates, after installing their corresponding pages you still need to update your page_category_regex and page_template_regex configs to match the translated page names. See MoinMaster:HelpOnConfiguration and http://moinmo.in/ConfigMarket for more details.

FrontPage configuration

For the root URL of your wiki, moin will use a special page (called the "front page"). Users can be given a translated front page in their preferred language, or they can be given any other single page you specify.

Note: you must set page_front_page to get rid of this page being the front page:

# Choose this, if most wiki content is in a single language.
# If English is not your wiki's main language, choose something in YOUR wiki language
page_front_page = u"MyStartingPage"

OR

# Choose this, if wiki content is maintained in multiple languages.
# In the navigation, "FrontPage" will get automatically translated for installed languages.
page_front_page = u"FrontPage"

If you go the single language way, you can copy some of the content of FrontPage (or one of its translations) to the page you choose as your page_front_page.

If you go the multiple language way, don't forget to edit all translations of FrontPage.

If you go the multiple languages way, people reaching your wiki will be directed to the front page corresponding to their browser language setting. If you did not prepare that page (see front page name for different languages in wiki comment below), they will see the default page for their language and have the impression the wiki is empty or badly maintained.

User interface text translations

MoinMoin tries to adapt the user interface to the language the user prefers.

If the user puts a specific language preference into his user preferences, that language will be used for the user interface. But the user doesn't even need to do that if he already has configured his browser with his language preferences.

If there is no specific user preferences language setting, moin tries to adapt to the languages the user configured in his browser. So if the browser tells moin that its preference is Canadian English, then German, then English in general and moin has German and English available (but not a specific configuration for Canadian English), then the user will get a German user interface.

If there is no common language in the user's browser configuration and in moin or if you have set language_ignore_browser = True, moin will fall back to using what is configured as language_default. This is also the case if the user's browser does not specify any language.

The usual case when you want to set language_ignore_browser = True is when running a local wiki with no international audience and you maintain the wiki in only one (your local) language. Don't forget to specify your one-and-only language using language_default when doing this.

System and help page translations and the navigation bar

The MoinMoin distribution archive contains the system pages (like RecentChanges) in different languages, selecting the correct language in the same way as for the user interface.

For example, if the navi_bar contains a link to RecentChanges, moin will first look for a translation of RecentChanges into the user's language. So if the user's language is German (de), the translation is AktuelleÄnderungen. Moin will use AktuelleÄnderungen in the navi_bar display if that page actually exists; otherwise, it will fall back to using RecentChanges.

Understanding Language packs

Quickstart (for lazy people): Install the package all_pages for the language(s) in which you provide some content.

For each language, there is up 17 packages of underlay pages. The underlay pages are split by priorities (essential, optional and "all") and by categories: